The version of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Protection Act introduced yesterday in the House of Representatives (embedded below) is identical to the civil liberties-killing version the House passed in 2013, but the political situation is not, which isn’t good news for opponents of the bill or anyone who values their privacy online.

At its heart, CISPA is a bill designed to help companies (like Sony) fight cybercrime and hackers. To do this, the bill allows the federal government to pass specific, classified information about would-be hackers and other attacks directly to companies. That, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing.

The very bad thing here is that the bill also “allows” companies to pass information that it gleans about “cyber threats” to the federal government, meaning information about its users. A “cyber threat” is classified extremely broadly, meaning that someone who sends a spam email (even if they were hacked or phished themselves) could have their information sent not only to the federal government, but to state and local law enforcement, as well.

Finally, there is company liability protection built into the bill, meaning that if, say, Facebook were to wrongly send your information to the government, the company cannot be held liable.

“CISPA would encourage the open sharing of personal data with nearly no privacy protections—a profound abuse of users’ rights,” Drew Mitnick, a lawyer with Access, a civil liberties organization, told me. “It would create yet another surveillance regime, giving the NSA new sources of user data, at a time when the U.S. is considering the privacy impact of existing surveillance powers. This bill should be a non-starter.”

Why did CISPA die in 2013?

CISPA died partly because many, many civil liberties organizations pointed out that it was a terribly broad and gave expansive powers to the government to spy. That didn’t matter in the Republican-controlled house, which passed the bill by a count of 288-127. But President Obama threatened to veto the bill, noting its distinct lack of privacy protections.

The Sony hack, of course. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat who co-sponsored the bill back in 2013, said in an emailed statement that “we must stop dealing with cyber attacks after the fact.

“Most recently, Sony was hit by a severe cyber attack by North Korea—the first destructive attack we’ve seen yet—and it cost the company millions of dollars,” he added.

This, of course, was expected. Cybersecurity expert Peter W. Singer told me that the hack would “will be both used and misused in everything from legislation to cybersecurity sales pitches.”

And, here we are.

So what’s different now, besides the whole Sony thing?

Well, for one, Rockefeller just retired. For two, Republicans control the Senate now. Though Ruppersberger is a Democrat, the legislation appears to have much more support among Republicans. Rep. Mike Rogers, who co-sponsored the old bill, is also gone, but Ruppersberger appears more than happy to carry the torch for him. Third, it’s not clear that Obama is still willing to veto CISPA. After the Sony hack, the president said that he wanted Congress to work on “stronger cybersecurity laws that allow for information sharing across private sector platforms as well as the public sector.”

That bill could potentially be CISPA.

Finally, it’s not even clear that Democrats still oppose an information sharing cybersecurity law. The greatest CISPA-like threat in play last year was called CISA, which was a very similar bill introduced in the Senate by Democrat Dianne Feinstein. That bill was never voted on because it had similar privacy problems, but it seems as though the tide is turning on both sides of the aisle on this issue.

Would having a law like CISPA on the books have prevented the Sony hack?

“Companies must persistently educate end users since it’s well known that many security breaches are due to uneducated employees downloading malware,” the EFF wrote. “Hackers at JP Morgan obtained inside access due to an un-updated server.”

More information from the government, even about specific threats, isn’t going to help much when passwords are stored in unencrypted Excel spreadsheets called ” Master_Password_Sheet” and Social Security information is stored in much the same way.

Sony made a horrible mistake, and now it appears as though we might all have to pay for it.

About The Author

After years of research and a series of unpleasant experiences concerning the current child protection services system, Alec Cope decided to combat the cancerous corruption through information. Freelance writing articles as a form of protest and distributing them throughout his former high-school and local area, Alec struck special chords with whomever he was in contact with.Alec has been involved in activism such as sit down protests as well as Idle No More gatherings. Being independent for the majority of his time, Alec became a member of the WeAreChange family to assist one of the organizations that inspired him to become active in the first place. With a larger platform and positive support Alec has committed the majority of his time to research, writing, and maintaining social media with the goal to continue expanding the awakening sweeping throughout all levels of society.Growing up within a rural area in Northern Michigan as well as being a native American descendant, Alec is seeking to expose environmental abuse in his state as well as globally. A high-school dropout, Alec chases his passion for writing and empowering individuals while showing any isolated person that they too can overcome the odds with a community that will support them. Alec lives in the lower peninsula of Michigan near Kalamazoo.https://www.facebook.com/alec.cope.75alecope8@gmail.comhttps://www.twitter.com/AlecCopehttp://www.pinterest.com/aleccope75/